First Inaugural Address

Summary

Andrew Jackson took the oath on 4 March 1829, the first President inaugurated on the Capitol's East Portico. He came to office after the bitter campaign of 1828, still mourning his wife Rachel, who had died in December, as the hero of New Orleans and the leader of a coalition that claimed to speak for ordinary voters against a Washington establishment. The address he read is short, about 1,100 words, and far more measured than the crowds who afterward packed the White House reception. Jackson presents himself as "the instrument of the Federal Constitution" and walks through the duties of the office in turn. He will keep in view "the limitations as well as the extent of the Executive power"; respect the States as "sovereign members of our Union"; and seek peace abroad with "the forbearance becoming a powerful nation rather than the sensibility belonging to a gallant people." The revenue calls for "strict and faithful economy" to retire a national debt whose long duration he calls "incompatible with real independence." Tariffs should favor agriculture, commerce, and manufactures equally. Standing armies are dangerous in peace; the militia, "a million of armed freemen," is the true defense. Two brief paragraphs carried the heaviest consequences. Jackson promises the Indian tribes "within our limits" a "just and liberal policy" and "humane and considerate attention"; fifteen months later he signed the Indian Removal Act. And he reads his election as a mandate for "the task of reform," correcting patronage that had placed "power in unfaithful or incompetent hands." His allies called the policy rotation in office; his critics called it the spoils system. He closes in diffidence, looking to his predecessors and to "the mind that founded and the mind that reformed our system," usually read as Washington and Jefferson, and to the Providence that "mercifully protected our national infancy."

Top Lessons

• A strong man promising limits

  Jackson arrived with a military reputation and a popular mandate, yet his first substantive sentence promises to remember "the limitations as well as the extent of the Executive power." The address lets students test a leader's stated limits against his later use of the veto, removals, and the Bank war.

• Reform or spoils?

  Jackson says the election "inscribes on the list of Executive duties... the task of reform," aimed at officeholders who had kept "power in unfaithful or incompetent hands." Supporters saw rotation in office as democratic accountability; opponents saw rewards for partisans. The text itself speaks only of integrity and competence.

• A promise and the policy that followed

  Jackson pledges "a just and liberal policy" toward "the Indian tribes within our limits." The phrase "within our limits" already raises the question of State and federal jurisdiction over tribal lands, and the Indian Removal Act followed in 1830. Students should read the sentence on its own terms, then set it beside the later policy.

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Medical Lens

Presidential inaugurals concern constitutional politics and national crisis; they have no medical content for this library's lens.